Eczema

Welcome to a fresh new year! This year I’ve decided not to make any half-hearted resolutions because I have recently come to terms with the fact that my memory lasts about a week these days and I simply will not remember. If I were a memory stick I’d be one of the ancient 128MB ones that barely holds an MP3 nowadays (Is this why the Let it Go song is STILL stuck in my head) that my agent says would only be good enough to give to her seven-year-old sister. Yeah, that’s me. So here’s five things I look forward to this year – five things I am quite certain will happen regardless of whether I remember it or not.

1/ More webdesign

Does my ‘search’ button look big in these jeans?

I haven’t talked much about work here in 2014, in fact, I don’t think I actually ever explained what I do outside this blog other than professionally eat burritos. My only explanation to this is that throughout the past year I genuinely had no idea what I was, professionally. (I am, however, sure that I am some kind of a ninja turtle with the rate I’m going with pizzas) I scratched my head, shoulder, knees, and balls every time someone asked what I do for a living and took much pleasure in their discomfort. I started 2014 as a full-time blogger, charging at life atop a (borrowed) French bulldog with a fistful of pastel-coloured macarons, then around mid-year my design workload got heavier, and had to take an unintentional, unofficial hiatus from said blog. Today I start the first working day of 2015 as a web-designer-cum-blogger-cum-photographer-slash-I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE, but happy to know for a fact that I will be making more ‘read more’ buttons this year than last, and actually looking forward to it all. In the meantime, here’s a small selection of my work from 2014:

Speaking of unofficial hiatus, I had momentarily ‘come back’ July of last year with a monthly series called Faraway Worlds, which had been one of many short-lived spurts of resuming the blogger title. This means, in 2015 you will be subject to some heavy backlog of travel that happened in a galaxy far far away, but also a much better-thought-out edit of some of the places that I guarantee you will be adding to your Places to Visit list in 2015. Ahh, don’t you love how sometimes shortcomings lead to good things… I wish I can say this about my aversion to shower. Here’s to another adventurous year in travel, and in the meantime, check out these destinations I had the absolute pleasure of visiting (and writing about) in 2014:

This, my friends, is the smug face of someone who has successfully kicked eczema in the ass in the past year. High five! Chest bump! Celebration snog! no? (please?) If I can sum up 2014 in terms of skin, it’d be beat it, ese, on account of how my skin went from a violently itchy, weeping, bleeding mess to miraculously healthy and smooth. The best part is, I think I have a good solution (tested and tried) that I can share with those that suffer something similar, and nothing vague and impossible along the lines of ‘eat only free-range, gluten-free grass’. I look forward to talking more about this, and hopefully helping some of you kick it too. This is another topic I refused to discuss in depth here in the blog, but here are a few occasions in the past year for those who would like to read up on the back-story.

4/ London re-dial

London calling, voicemail, redial

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be living in a city as dynamic as London, and occasionally dare to fantasize what life would be like had I lived in the Alps, sleeping at 7pm and milking goats at sunrise. (Hubby just muttered yeah, that’s not how it works from the other room) I love London for the tradition, diversity of culture and all the little quirks, like its complete inability to deal with snow like an adult, but my all-time-favourite has always been the food scene. I didn’t manage to share as many of my favourites last year, so I’m keen to change this. 2015 is a promising year for food and I can’t wait to explore the next hot thing here. Secretly I hope to see more Korean fusion cuisine in the horizon but if that doesn’t work I suppose I can take a thing of Kimchi to every restaurant and be happy with that.

No more, ‘How do you edit your photos?’ ‘I edit with wingardium leviosa‘s, I promise

I’ve been selfish with what I know when it comes to photography or webdesign in the past year lifetime, keeping trade secrets under lock and key of my own big mouth (it’s actually a minor miracle), but I’m slowly coming to realize that sharing, really, is caring. And I care for my readers because there are some amazing blogs out there and you still make time to visit mine. You’re good peeps. Also, just because you have instructions for the iron-man suit doen’t mean you’ll know how to work it. *CACKLE*. Did I just compare myself to Iron Man? I did indeed, but I happen to beat eczema last year and my skin now resembles a freshly-ironed silk blouse so I think I very well deserve that title. You can call me an asshole now.

Here’s to another year full of hopes and sugary-sweet dreams, mistakes to learn from, and tremendous success. I wish you a very Happy New Year.

Welcome to chapter eleven of Help! My cat ate my keyboard: 1,001 Fashion Blogger Excuses. In previous chapters we covered: ‘My husband is taking blurry outfit pictures because he wasn’t fed’, ‘I’m in a different country and forgot to pack my blogging PJs’, ‘I have a life, I bought it at the pharmacy’, and most recently, ‘I lost confidence in blogging and un-grew balls that help with charging on’. This one is called ‘Eczema: wrestling with Wolverine‘. It was a few weeks back when I noticed a small dry patch on my arm – usual stuff, but what at first started as niggling irritation gradually developed into a violent itch, and next thing I knew it had flared up to my face, neck and torso. I know my body’s a bit of an attention wh*re, but this was truly something else – had I gone and shaved my head and attacked the tripod with an umbrella, it still would’ve brought the WTF factor down a smidge. I won’t go into much gory detail – in a nutshell, for the most part of the past three weeks I was on a Jekyll & Hyde cycle, tearing myself apart during the night and then weeping over it come dawn (Hyde would like a tranquilizer gun for Christmas). I’ve tried every spell in the book – Eastern and Western medicine, organic and steroids, voodoo and prayer… So far it’s subsided a little but I’m still on a bit of a yo-yo, and while I’m in the ‘up’, I thought I’d drop by and let you in on why I’ve been gone for so long.

It’s truly surprising how the concept of ‘beauty’ can be so literally skin-deep, and self-confidence as equally fickle. I shrank like a sweater in a wrong wash-cycle and thought a whole lot about books with damaged book-covers. Makes you reconsider your own story, really, especially when you’re the author of a diary that explores skin-deep treasures… Anyhoo, bottom line is, don’t take your health for granted, dear readers. And remember, you are what you eat (i.e this eczema is the sobstory of my body trying to turn into a Snickers ice cream bar).

On a plus note, I am now an expert in cover-up makeup and should any zombies from the Walking Dead need assistance in appearing fairly human I am available in the evenings and weekends, so call me maybe.